


Bet On Us

by oliveriley



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Anxiety, F/F, OCD, kinda made myself cry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-05
Updated: 2014-12-05
Packaged: 2018-02-28 05:29:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2720477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oliveriley/pseuds/oliveriley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lola Perry thrives on normalcy. She doesn't like change, she doesn't like disruption in her schedule, and she certainly doesn't appreciate LaF's absence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bet On Us

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own these guys.
> 
> The music that inspired this was "Dead Sea" by The Lumineers.

The room was heavy with the smell of bleach, hanging thick and acrid in the air as the woman with pursed lips and fiery eyes knelt on the floor and scrubbed. She was rigid, mechanical in movement, and her spine resembled a steel cable not unlike the ones that hung bridges. With a deep sniff and a huff of annoyance - either at an invisible stain or her own emotions - Perry sat up and used her forearm to push a curled strand of hair out of her face. She was up to her elbows in suds and rubber gloves and the floor around her was spotless. The room was spotless, and the cracked window was clearly not enough ventilation for the amount of clean that the dorm had seen today. But there was no class at the moment, no supernatural crises, and no one but her in the suddenly yawning space that threatened to swallow her up, anxieties and all.  
Carmilla was back, which was great, she supposed. The vampire had grown on her, despite the amount of stress she added into Perry’s daily life. But with the return of Carmilla, Laura was thoroughly engaged and the two rarely left their room. Danny, in the throes of what everyone assumed was a rebound, took Kirsch under her wing and they were doing all sorts of ridiculous physical activity (trident throwing? Who even did that?) to keep busy. LaFontaine was busy. In fact, it had been almost five hours since the budding scientist had been in the room, which was unreasonably rude, considering Perry was running out of things to scrub down and without LaFontaine there were no messes to be made. But no, they were busy with that thumb drive in the library doing God knows what, and Perry was alone with her thoughts.

 

Falling back onto her rear in the middle of the sparkling bathroom floor and crossing her legs, Perry looked around with an uncomfortable sort of sadness in her eyes. She wasn’t used to the silence and as much as she had craved it she didn’t know how to handle it. Any of it. In the past three years she and LaF had become so close that their absence left a hole in the fabric of Perry’s universe. And without them there - with them entranced with some invisible man on a plastic chip and not being the steady rhythm there in the dorm, Perry was alone with her thoughts and (oh, Lord, no) feelings. Sitting alone on the bathroom floor with her pants damp from a too-clean floor and splotches of suds and water on her ridiculous kitten shirt and hair in disarray, she was out of her element. And she hated it. There was no normalcy because a computer virus had stolen it from her. The air thrummed with nervous energy and it was a miracle that it didn’t cause a chemical reaction with the ammonia from the cleaner. And like all storms that roil and the anxiety that churns the ocean, there was a break and a crash and there were tears because what’s a storm without any rain and goddammit there was nothing left to clean.

 

That’s how they found her, thirty minutes later. They were quiet opening the door because the smell of bleach had permeated the hall and that meant Perry was working and they didn’t want to spill the bucket again and get yelled at. So they were cautious and quiet and worried, really, as they entered the room and the only sounds were coming from the bathroom in anguished rasps and short, terse swears. So they became quick and their arms were around her suddenly and whispers and hushes and the steady came back to the sea and she was no longer drowning because they were there and it was both of them and just them and, exhausted and disheveled and sniffling, she allowed LaFontaine to remove the rubber gloves and put them on the edge of the bucket. She allowed their steady, quiet voice to talk them up off the floor and over to bed and she was tired and their heartbeat was strong and it was steady. And for a moment they were hers again and it was all so normal, she thought, as sleep tugged at the corners of her mind, that LaFontaine smelled like old books and very distinctly LaF and that masked the bleach and the compulsions and she grabbed a fistful of their shirt just to be sure that the normalcy would stay. 

 

"I’m not going anywhere, nerd," came the whisper in response to the hoarse whisper that Perry didn’t know she spoke. "I won’t let you sink back into that."

_Whoa, I’m like the Dead Sea_  
 _The finest words you ever said to me_  
 _Honey can’t you see,_  
 _I was born to be, be your Dead Sea_


End file.
